Exiled Back in Time
by Kurieo Parnok
Summary: Wheatley found a cyborg body and escaped Aperture Science, but not to a world-or time-he intended.


He has escaped, but only barely. Apparently, even if you turn one of your enemies into a potato and drop both her and the other down a several hundred feet elevator shaft, they can still come back and nearly kill you.

He put a hand to his head as he felt dizzy and squinted, trying to see anything in front of him, only to run face-first into a tree. He felt pain in his face and rubbed it, surprised at the odd feeling of pain, but carefully moved forward.

_"Get back here, Wheatley!"_

_ "No! No no no no, no thanks!"_

_ He had rolled across the tilted, destroyed floor, desperately looking for a transportation rail plug in. He had found it and zipped out of the room as fast as he could. He needed to find an escape pod—those were still around, weren't they?_

He tripped over a rock and fell forward. A flash of red in his mental processors signified an Emergency Action and his arms and a leg jerked forward, catching him gently to be in a kneeling position, unharmed.

"Couldn't have done that a minute ago with the tree?" he grumbled, his words coming out in an incoherent mumble. He continued.

_"Get back here, Wheatley!" an enraged femme voice roared, her voice grating up into electronic tones towards the end._

_ "Uh, no! No thanks! I gotta do something, uh, over here!"_

_ Was that-? Yeah! An escape pod of sorts!_

_ He didn't even think, shooting down the core transportation rail and into the escape pod area, pretty much blind from terror at what the enormous femme would do to him._

He carefully extended his hands, not wanting to run into anything. Suddenly, the world flashed and he reared back a bit as the world significantly brightened up. Blinking a couple of times in surprise, he lifted a hand up and realized that both his eyes and chest were glowing a bright blue, giving him the light he needed to move about.

"Huh, once again I'm a flash light…" he muttered.

_Ahh! This wasn't an escape pod! It's—what _is_ it? He had be ejected from the transportation rail and fallen into metal claws that turned and flipped him about, jamming him into some tall, narrow body. Arms had come up in front of him._

_ "Ah, no! Chell, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean any of it, really! Justohdeargodpleasedon'tkillme!"_

_ Something exploded near him as Glados self-destructed a piece of the lab to get to him. A flash of red took over Wheatley's world and suddenly, he was moving quickly though the lab, bouncing and scrambling, in spite of not being on a rail, or being carried by the arms that pulled him along._

_ "What—what—what!"_

_ Stressed, scared, and no comprehension of what the _hell_ was going on, he had simply shut himself down…_

"And then I wake up in the middle of bloody no where in…" He stopped and lifted his arms out to stare down at himself. "_This!_"

To the naked eye, he was largely human, white, in his late twenties or early thirties, with fluffy blond hair and blue eyes with square glasses. He was dressed in a ragged dark blue overcoat with dark grey pants and boots. His chest was where things were unusual physically; a large part of his chest was made of silver metal, in which was connected a large, round, blue orb that was currently casting the majority of the light illuminating the forest around the man. His chest was where his initial body, his round, core body, had been plugged in.

Beneath the artificial skin was more weirdness; not a single drop of blood, nor shard of bone could be found within him. Only metal, circuit boards, streams of nanobots, and various lubricants made up the human body. It wasn't only weird for any on looker, but especially so for Wheatley, a personality core who had never known what it was like to have limbs or a literal face, as compared to his original round, basketball-sized form. It had taken him a while to look through the cyborg body's files, but found it to be yet another abandoned Aperture Science project. It wasn't sentient, but had an Emergency Alert System (EAS), which made the body move on its own accord to preserve itself. This was what had saved both the body and Wheatley from Glados' wrath; it had somehow managed to find a way out of the lab and to the surface, where Wheatley had woken up in the forest, alone, but free and safe.

"You know," he said aloud, practicing his new mouth with comically exaggerated lip movements, "It's all _her_ fault, Chell's."

An idea appeared and he latched onto it, his eyes flashing again in anger.

"Yeeeesss," he growled, drawing the word out, but the effect ruined as he opened his mouth wide to start the word, "If it hadn't been for that stupid _mute_ being the only survivor, then I wouldn't have had to do anything! Just rule the lab myself! If it hadn't been for her, _she_ wouldn't have awoken Glados, the crazy she-computer ruler of the labs, and none of this had happened! I could have been king of the robots! And it would have been mine! All mine! Muahahahaha—"

Wheatley's insane cackling was cut short when a set of flood lights clicked on and covered him. His chest and eye lights went dimmed and he turned, a simple, blank look of surprise on his face. Behind him, a large, heavy-duty, mud-splattering truck outfitted with a flood light rack was parked. Several humans were standing on or about the truck, staring at Wheatley with awkward, confused faces.

"Uh…hellooooo?" Wheatley said, smiling nervously.

Suddenly, his lights started flashing red as another EA started up in his head, this time with a buzzing, electronic voice blaring from somewhere on the cyborg body.

**"Warning! Warning! Power supply low! Initiating emergency shut down!"**

"W-What-!" Wheatley cried, flailing his arms, before, like a switch, he passed out.

A flaming bolt of energy from his core's face—his cyborg body's chest—and up and down the cyborg's spine is what woke him up, making him bolt straight up into a sitting position with beams of light jetting from his eyes, nose, and mouth.

_"Wow-_wee!" he shouted, "What a rush! _What_ was _that?_"

He looked around and saw that he was now seated beside the large truck and the humans sitting or standing around him. To his immediate right was a young woman with short red hair in tight, small, black shorts and red tank top with black boots. To his immediate left was a young man, a farmer-type, apparently, in a blue flannel shirt and jeans with mud-stained work boots and short-cropped brown hair. Sitting in the truck bed, looking over the edge down on him, was a set of twins; girls in their early teens with short blond pig tails and big blue eyes, dressed in inverse blue and green outfits. Leaning against the truck's engine area, whose hood was currently up, was a buff-looking man all in black with a scar on the jaw line on the right side of his face. A dark-skinned lady with dreadlocks in a black tank top and khakis was leaning against him, looking down on him with eager curiosity.

"Well, nice to see that _that_ worked," farmer boy chuckled.

"_That_ was called a _jump start_, my friend," the ginger laughed, patting him on his shoulder. She waved a hand in front of his eyes, chopping up the light beams. "And yeah, Greg, it looked like it worked _really_ well!"

"Jump start?" Wheatley asked, shaking his head as the extra light dimmed down, "Then where did you attach the-?"

He looked down at himself and saw the chargers of a jumper cable clipped to his man pecs. Squealing like a girl, he swatted the clips off of him as the twins laughed. The dark lady suddenly dropped to her knees in front of Wheatley and squeezed his cheeks, pulling on them.

"Oh my gosh, you are a _cutie!_" she exclaimed, "Are you an escaped government project or something? Or maybe an alien!"

Then an idea hit Wheatley.

"Heeeey, wait a minute!" he exclaimed, "How are you all alive? It's been hundreds of years since the world went to hell! I thought humans were extinct!"

The humans all exchanged confused looks, except for Tall and Dark, who disconnected and packed away the jumper cables as he spoke.

"Pfft, yeah right!" said he, "I don't call four billion plus humans 'extinct'!"

"What…? Hey, wait, what's the date today?"

He was told and he leaned back on his arms, the implications making his processor spin.

_That's…that's back before Aperture Science even existed!_ He thought, _Good god, I'm not even a twinkle in a programmer's eye yet! And the programmer isn't even a twinkle in their _father's_ eye! How…? But… with my superior scientific intellect!_

"I can take over the world!" Wheatley cackled, shooting to his feet.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, but how about you say a little about yourself and a thanks first?" Tall and Dark grumbled.

"Pfft, and talk down to such humans?" Wheatley snorted, "Never! Besides, I don't even know you, and everyone _knows_ you shouldn't talk to strangers!"

Suddenly, the twins lunged and wrapped their arms around Wheatley's neck and shoulders in a hug, grinning cheerfully at him.

"I'm Tiana!" said one twin.

"And I'm Diana!" said the other.

"I'm Greg Hammer, their brother," the farm boy said.

"Aaron, their cousin," tall and dark grumbled.

"I'm Louisa, their friend!" the red-head said, standing up.

"Everyone calls me Rosa," the dark girl said, getting to her feet.

"There, we know each other," Aaron growled, "Now who are you? _What_ are you? And what's all this about taking over the world?"

"I-I—" Wheatley stammered. He crossed his arms and turned away huffily, "I don't have to explain anything to you!"

Louisa's polite smile turned into a pout and suddenly grabbed at Wheatley's ear, tugging his head down to her level. An EA went off in Wheatley's head again and he yipped in pain.

"Oww, oww, oww, oww!" Wheatley yelped. "Why does that hurt?"

"Listen, mister!" Louisa snapped, "We charged you up, the least you can do is give us some answers! Now give us 'em before I decided to take you for a ride _being dragged behind the truck!_"

Tiana and Diana fell back, giggling like little school girls, while the others game small smiles to each other.

"Ahh!Myname'sWheatley,I',,butthenIgottheupperhand,butthentheywantedtodestroyme,butIdestroyedthemfirst,butapparentlyIdidn'—"

"Woha, woha!" Greg exclaimed, "Slow down! How about we go back to my place and we discuss it there?

A couple hours later, at a farm house on the edge of the woods and a giant field, in a warm, lit kitchen, the youth gathered and had listened to Wheatley's tale.

"…I mean, all I wanted was to have complete and absolute power! Did I_ really_ deserve to be blown up and thrown out?" Wheatley complained.

The response was not favorable.

"Yeap."

"Oh yeah."

"Mmmmmaybe."

"You were kind of asking for it."

"No, he was _totally_ asking for it!"

"Oh forget you!" Wheatley snarled, "I'm smarter than you, any how! I'll just start Aperture Science myself in this time line, and become rich and powerful! Maybe even take over the world!"

"But that's _my_ main question," Greg interrupted, "How did you even _get_ here?"

"What!" Wheatley exclaimed, "Didn't you just hear me? I said I was going to take over the world!"

"Yeah, what brought a cutie like you back from the future?" Rosa giggled, pinching one of Wheatley's cheeks again.

"Rosa, honey, please stop that," Aaron complained.

"Aren't you listening to me?" Wheatley whined.

"Cutie?" Louisa snorted, "The tin can's a rude piece of garbage!"

Wheatley smacked his hands on the table and stood up with an insulted, "Hey!"

The twins, who had been whispering to each other, nodded together and one of them stood up.

"Hey!" she called out. "If that robot body could get you out of danger, it must have a way of seeing, right?"

Everyone looked at her.

"Riiiiight," Wheatley said, pretending that he knew what she was talking about.

"Well, would the robot have, like, memory files you could access to figure out how you went back through time?"

"That's a pretty good idea, Tiana," Greg said, "Mr. Wheatley, why don't you try that?"

"Ah, yes, I will!" Wheatley said, "But, um, only if the rest of you continue to show such respect by calling me Mr. Master—"

Louisa punched him in the cheek.

"Shut up and get on with it!"

Wheatley stepped away from her, crossing his arms again.

"Well, not with _that_—"

Louisa lifted a fist.

"Just a moment…" Wheatley squeaked, turning his attention inward.

To the humans, he merely came to stand, eyes closed and head down. Inside, though, Wheatley was going through the shelves of memory files and data, finding his way out of his own processor domain and coming to observe the frame work of the robot body's. Sure enough, after a little searching, he found a small cache of memory files. According to the data, the purpose of the memory files was so that the body could learn from old dangers. Such as whether or not it could survive a three-hundred foot free fall into a pool of pancakes apparently.

_I knew Aperture Science was random, but this is just ridiculous,_ he mused to himself after glancing through the pancake memory files. _Now, just how did—yeagh!_

He touched a memory file and suddenly the night of his escape came back in all its terrifying glory. The body was running through a storage house, leaping and climbing over enormous tours or companion cubes. The body leaped onto a cat walk and ran forward a few steps, only to stop when a slim figure in an orange jump suit and silver brace boots landed in front of him. Her face was shadowed, but was lit up when the glowing blue end of the cannon-like item in her hands turned as she did. The robot's optic systems, though, zoomed in on the cannon item and completely ignored the woman's face.

A quick file appeared on optic view to the side—the "cannon" was an Aperture Science portal gun, capable of creating a worm hole in the very fabric of existence so a person could bypass even miles of space so long as there were two smooth, firm surfaces to place the end of the portal.

The robot body had lunged at the cannon and it and the woman had struggled. Wheatley felt a rising hatred in his core and wished for the struggle to end in the demise of the woman. This woman—Chell—who had turned his simplistic robot life into a living hell, all because she had refused to die like ever twenty-thousand other inmates.

Suddenly, in the memory file, the body ripped the portal gun away from Chell and tossed Chell aside, loosing complete track of her. The robot shot the portal at the wall, creating a glowing blue hole of sorts. The light on the end of the gun turned orange. The robot turned, looking for another surface to shoot, when Chell side-tackled it, making the gun's aim go wild and blast another portal, an orange one, right into the blue portal.

The body flung Chell aside as an explosion came from the portals, spewing magma and sapphire-colored sparks every where. The body's sensory inputs went wild as _something_ it had never been programmed to comprehend occurred. Wheatley got the impression of the body being pulled into the portals in a dramatic explosion of wind. Blue and orange light all around, swirling—nothing like the typical, brief, portal passing—and suddenly, there the body and Wheatley were in the woods.

Wheatley snapped online to find Rosa fiddling with his coat and one of the twins poking his head. They jumped back a little, startled at his sudden movement.

He blinked, then said, "The body saw the portal gun as a means of escape and wrestled it from Chell, but she fought back, the damn bitch—"

Greg and Aaron covered the twins' ears while Louisa slapped Wheatley.

"Language!" she scolded.

Wheatley shot her an annoyed look before continuing, "Any way, she fought back and the body wound up shooting the portals into each other. Some how, that made a rip in time and space and dumped me off here and now."

"How does _that_ work?" Rosa asked.

Wheatley shrugged, "Darned if I know! _I_ didn't _make_ the darn thing!"

Louisa put her hands on her hips and smirked, "_You_ want to take over the world with technology _you_ don't even know how to build?"

"Well, yeah! I'm sure I can just…hash it together some how!" Wheatley said, gesturing helplessly.

"Riiiight," Louisa said, obviously not believing him.

"Can we keep him, Aaron?" Rosa suddenly exclaimed, hugging Wheatley. "He's _sooo_ cute! And I promise to take care of him!"

"I don't think so," Aaron objected. "We should turn the freak into the officials—let _them_ handle it!"

"Noooo!" the twins cried, hugging Wheatley. "Don't let the mean men take away Wheat Bread!"

"Wheat _what_!" Wheatley squeaked.

"Yeah!" one twin wailed, "They'll cut him up and barbecue him!"

"What?"

"And bust him up!"

"Huh?"

"And turn him into a monster!"

"What—what-!" Wheatley yelped, "Maybe I can, uh, hang out here until I figure stuff out!"

"Yeah, right," Louisa snorted, "You can get your tin tushie on the road. _We're_ not your care takers and this isn't the science lab."

"Pleeeeeease?" Wheatley begged.

"No!" Louisa snarled.

"Wait, guys, over here," Greg said, gesturing to the living room. "Tiana, Diana, you keep an eye on Wheat Bread, okay?"

"Roger!" replied the twins with a perky salute.

"My _name_ is _not_ Wheat Bread!" Wheatley objected.

But the adults had moved into the next room and were speaking in low whispers. The twins started bouncing and asking Wheatley dozens of questions, but he ignored them, focusing his audio sensors to pick up the conversation.

_"Come on, guys, it may not be so bad."_

_ "What?"_

_ "Well, we're barely keeping up the farm as it is with just us. I'm not going to let the family farm foreclose just because we don't have the hands to keep it up!"_

_ "Greg, you have Louisa, and the twins on weekends and free days, not to mention me and Rosa in our spare time to help you keep the farm up. If you can't keep it going—"_

_ "Aaron, I am _not_ giving up!"_

_ "Okay! Okay! Jeez, cool your jets, will ya?"_

_ "I have to agree with Aaron, Greg. I mean, can we _really_ trust a robot from the future without him going all Terminator on us?"_

_ "He…doesn't seem very…smart… So I wouldn't worry."_

Just as Greg said that, one of the twins got under Wheatley's coat and tried making off with it like a cape, dragging Wheatley around the kitchen. She crawled into one of the large counter cupboards and Wheatley was forced to follow or loose his coat.

_"Besides, I'll handle what ever trouble he starts. From what I hear, he's never been outside of a laboratory, so he'll need some life learning, and maybe we can teach him to stop hating. Please, guys, let's take the chance."_

_ "But what about the twins? Are you sure you can _trust him with without hurting the twins?"

The group came back into the kitchen. Greg noticed one of the girls kneeling in front of a cupboard, laughing at it, and went over to open it. He found himself looking at a nervously smiling Wheatley as the other twin had bound him up in his own coat between the pots and the life-time supply of canned soup. Greg smiled at the others.

"Oh, yeah, not a problem."

Dawn had finally come—Wheatley's first in his new life. The dim light found him sitting on the rusted bulk of a truck that had died in the yard and never been removed. The scene before him was simple, with the farmhouse behind him, the barn of sleeping animals off a distance to his right, and an enormous grassy field stretching in front of him with the forest looming up on the other side. A sort of serene, but eerie, tone was added to everything with the grey fog that covered it. Aaron and Rosa had gone home, while Greg, Louisa, Tiana, and Diana had all settled in to get some rest. But Wheatley didn't need sleep, and thus has spent the night in his current position, reviewing his life.

He had went over the events over and over again, each time finding more and more reasons to blame Chell for his current situation and misfortune. If it hadn't been for her, he wouldn't have been exiled from the only home he had ever known, which he could have controlled, and thrown back into the computer equivalent of the Dark Ages only to be a robot slave. If it hadn't been for that stupid, ugly, fat, squishy, bloody, _mute_…

Tiana came bouncing out of the house, a plate of toast in one hand, eager to welcome her new friend to his new life with a proper breakfast (deciding to find out whether or not he could actually _eat_). Upon approaching him, though, she stopped short.

Wheatley didn't notice the young girl, instead his eyes were boring a hole into something only he could see, his hansom face furrowed into a deep, angry glare of pure hatred. He was muttering darkly to himself, his voice taking on a slight buzzing, electronic rumble when he spoke, as if his voice was made from a bass speaker.

"Would have been a triumph…I hate you… _loath_ you…could have been something other than the laboratory looser…could have had power…couldn't even let me have _that_, could you…?"

Tiana stepped back nervously, wondering whether or not she should go tell Greg. Wheatley's angry mutterings grew quiet and only something in him hummed low, deep, and angry. The top and bottom part of the icy blue light on his chest were cut off by metal plates partially covering it, making the core in the chest also glare. Silence reigned over the damp, dim dawn.

Finally, somewhere, a raven made the first sound of the day


End file.
